page_title: Major explorations after the Age of Discovery
section_title: James Cook's Pacific Ocean exploration (1768–1779)
hierarchical_section_title: Major explorations after the Age of Discovery / James Cook's Pacific Ocean exploration (1768–1779)
caption_attribution_description: English: Map showing the three voyages of Captain James Cook, with the first version in red, second in green, and third in blue. The route of Cook's crew following his death is shown as a dashed blue line.
context_page_description: Major explorations of Earth continued after the Age of Discovery. By the early seventeenth century, vessels were sufficiently well built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet by sea. In the 17th century Dutch explorers such as Willem Jansz and Abel Tasman explored the coasts of Australia. Spanish expeditions from Peru explored the South Pacific and discovered archipelagos such as Vanuatu and the Pitcairn Islands. Luis Vaez de Torres chartered the coasts of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and discovered the strait that bears his name. European naval exploration mapped the western and northern coasts of Australia, but the east coast had to wait for over a century. Eighteenth-century British explorer James Cook mapped much of Polynesia and traveled as far north as Alaska and as far south as the Antarctic Circle. In the later 18th century the Pacific became a focus of renewed interest, with Spanish expeditions, followed by Northern European ones, reaching the coasts of northern British Columbia and Alaska.
  Voyages into the continents took longer.
context_section_description: British explorer James Cook, who had been the first to map the North Atlantic island of Newfoundland, spent a dozen years in the Pacific Ocean. He made great contributions to European knowledge of the area, and his more accurate navigational charting of large areas of the ocean was a major achievement.
  Cook made three voyages to the Pacific, including the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands (although oral tradition seems to point towards a far earlier Spanish expedition having achieved the latter), as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
  Cook was the first European to have extensive contact with various people of the Pacific. He correctly concluded there was a relationship among all the people in the Pacific, despite their being separated by thousands of miles of ocean (see Malayo-Polynesian languages). In New Zealand the coming of Cook is often used to signify the onset of colonization. He also theorised that Polynesians originated from Asia, which was later proved to be correct by scientist Bryan Sykes.
  Cook was accompanied by many scientists, whose observations and discoveries added to the importance of the voyages. Two botanists went on the first voyage, Englishman Joseph Banks and Swedish Daniel Solander, between them collecting over 3,000 plant species. Banks became one of the strongest promoters of the settlement of Australia by the British, based on his own personal observations. Cook was also accompanied by artists. Sydney Parkinson completed 264 drawings before his death near the end of the first voyage; these were of immense scientific value to British botanists. Cook's second expedition included the artist William Hodges, who produced notable landscape paintings of Tahiti, Easter Island, and other locations.
caption: The routes of Captain James Cook's voyages. The first voyage is shown in red, second voyage in green, and third voyage in blue. The route of Cook's crew following his death is shown as a dashed blue line.
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